Ward co-writes song for Christmas album

Thursday

For professional songwriters, getting a tune recorded and on the radio usually is enough, but having it recorded by country music legends like Alabama? That’s a whole other thing.

“It’s cool for me because not many people can say they’ve had a song they’ve co-wrote on an Alabama album,” said Gadsden resident Scott Ward, who co-wrote a song on “American Christmas,” Alabama’s new holiday album. “It’s a good feeling, just having that credit.”

The song — “Greatest Gift” — is a slow, sentimental tune, drawing attention to the birth of Jesus as the reason for the season. The song is sandwiched between Alabama’s takes on “Winter Wonderland” and “Jingle Bells” on the album, which was released in early October. Ward said he had no idea the song had been selected by the band until that month, when co-writer Mark Narmore, who has written for Shenandoah, Blackhawk and John Michael Montgomery, gave him a call.

Ward said he’d pitched the song to the Oak Ridge Boys and Shenandoah, but Alabama picking up the song hadn’t occurred to him. The band last released Christmas albums more than 20 years ago.

It may have helped that the third songwriting partner was Sally Gentry, daughter of Alabama bassist Teddy Gentry. She wrote the lyrics, Ward said, and then he and Narmore put together the instrumentation to go along with it, working out of recording studios in Muscle Shoals. The song was finished in 2014, and almost turned up in a 2015 film about depression around the holidays, but that project fell through, and the song sat in wait. The tune made its way back around to the band earlier this year — the way Ward heard it, the band sat outside with a boombox and listened to demo tapes of Christmas songs to make their selections.

Ward has been in music for more than three decades, he said; he grew up in Calhoun County before attending Gadsden State in the late ’80s. He learned to play guitar and then was asked by the school's show band director to switch to bass, for which he could get a scholarship to attend the school. He played with bands around town and caught the attention of David Hood, bass player of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who invited him up to northern Alabama to start working on music in 2001.

He recorded his first album, “Muscle Shoals Down Through Decatur,” in 2010, with a follow-up in 2014, during the recording of which he hooked up with Narmore. He’d already had the success that many dream about, performing, recording and producing with childhood heroes like Steve Cropper, guitarist of the Blues Brothers and Booker T. & the M.G.’s, or Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery, songwriter for George Jones.

“I’m playing bass and I look over and Steve Cropper is there, and he jumps up to play the solo on ‘Rawhide,’ steps up with that Telecaster and starts playing the solo, and that’s probably the main reason I wanted to learn to play the guitar, that solo in particular,” said Ward. “You just get nervous but you relax a little bit, but in the back of your mind you’re in awe, and when it’s finished you think, ‘Did that really happen?’”

Ward’s last project was an album recorded last year with Veda Pickett Lee, daughter of Wilson Pickett, with an expected release in January, to coincide with the anniversary of Pickett’s death. He said that he plans to keep his focus on songwriting and producing for the time being, to build on the success of “Greatest Gift.” It’ll be a tough achievement to beat, but Ward said he’s up to the challenge.

“Alabama, to me, has always been the pinnacle,” said Ward. “I may never be able to top this, but you just have to try.”

For more of Ward’s music, visit soundcloud.com/sward399 or search his production company, Tone In Motion Records, on Facebook.

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